Sales calls can be really annoying and can waste a lot of time. In today’s story, one person found a way to make money off of those sales calls.

Let’s see how the story unfolds…

Telesales, sure I want to hear all about it.

Around 2001, I was being bombarded by telesales people trying to sell me all kinds of things, mainly financial sales, insurance, investments, sure things etc.

They were taking my time and begging me to talk through all the options with them.

OP got a different phone number.

Anyway I got so fed up with this that I paid for a premium phone number and got my listing changed with the directory services.

The premium number paid me £1 per minute.

OP made a lot of money.

After that I would answer them and listen to their pitches, ask questions trying to make the call last longer (I was a sure thing and interested after all) and then decline their product or service.

I was making £30 to £45 a call.

One of them was from France about yacht finance. I made £250.

I had no idea you could get paid for answering the phone!

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story…

This reader is surprised the sales people didn’t realize it was a premium number.

Here’s the experience of a former telemarketer.

This reader shared another way to get telemarketers to hang up.

Another reader liked how the story played out.

Here’s some more info about premium numbers.

Telemarketers should only be allowed to call premium numbers.

That would be amazing!

If you liked that story, check out this post about a group of employees who got together and why working from home was a good financial decision.